ause your godson was crying. I can
hear his cry from the bottom of the garden. But I would not let this go
without a word of farewell. I have just been reading over what I have
said, and am horrified to see how vulgar are the feelings expressed!
What I feel, every mother, alas! since the beginning must have felt, I
suppose, in the same way, and put into the same words. You will laugh
at me, as we do at the naive father who dilates on the beauty and
cleverness of his (of course) quite exceptional offspring. But the
refrain of my letter, darling, is this, and I repeat it: I am as happy
now as I used to be miserable. This grange--and is it not going to be an
estate, a family property?--has become my land of promise. The desert is
past and over. A thousand loves, darling pet. Write to me, for now I can
read without a tear the tale of your happy love. Farewell.

XXXII. MME. DE MACUMER TO MME. DE L'ESTORADE March 1826.

Do you know, dear, that it is more than three months since I have
written to you or heard from you? I am the more guilty of the two, for I
did not reply to your last, but you don't stand on punctilio surely?

Macumer and I have taken your silence for consent as regards the
baby-wreathed luncheon service, and the little cherubs are starting this
morning for Marseilles. It took six months to carry out the design.
And so when Felipe asked me to come and see the service before it was
packed, I suddenly waked up to the fact that we had not interchanged a
word since the letter of yours which gave me an insight into a mother's
heart.

My sweet, it is this terrible Paris--there's my excuse. What, pray, is
yours? Oh! what a whirlpool is society! Didn't I tell you once that
in Paris one must be as the Parisians? Society there drives out all
sentiment; it lays en embargo on your time; and unless you are
very careful, soon eats away your heart altogether. What an amazing
masterpiece is the character of Celimene in Moliere's _Le Misanthrope_!
She is the society woman, not only of Louis XIV.'s time, but of our own,
and of all, time.

Where should I be but for my breastplate--the love I bear Felipe? This
very morning I told him, as the outcome of these reflections, that he
was my salvation. If my evenings are a continuous round of parties,
balls, concerts, and theatres, at night my heart expands again, and
is healed of the wounds received in the world by the delights of the
passionate love which await my return.